BEIJING — The success of last week's concert in Pyongyang by the New York Philharmonic raises the prospect that the United States might start normalizing relations with North Korea, possibly taking the first formal steps before the end of the Bush presidency.
Although the musicians and their entourage flew out on Wednesday, more Americans than at any time in the recent past have been visiting a country that President Bush dubbed part of an "axis of evil."
Five U.S. government employees are stationed semi-permanently in North Korea, including a former Foreign Service officer who was brought out of retirement to coordinate logistics for disarmament teams from a Pyongyang hotel room.
Assistant Secretary of State Christopher R. Hill says that the United States could establish diplomatic relations before the end of Bush's term if North Korea completely dismantled its nuclear program.
"They would like the establishment of diplomatic relations," Hill said in an interview Saturday in Beijing. "We've told them we are not prepared to do that until they give up their nuclear materials. . . . We can begin the process of discussing what we are going to do, whether we are going to open embassies, that sort of thing. . . . But we will not have diplomatic relations with a nuclear North Korea.
"There are people who won't want to recognize North Korea . . . there are people who don't want to recognize any number of countries," he said. "But in the context of denuclearization, I think there would be strong support."
President Bush has called North Korea a "prison for its own people" and said at a news conference last week that he never hoped to have a personal relationship with leader Kim Jong Il.
Hill said that diplomatic recognition would not imply acquiescence to North Korea's human rights record.
"Obviously we have continued differences with them, but we can do that in the context of two states that have diplomatic relations," he said.
North Korea is one of the few countries with which the United States has no diplomatic ties -- Cuba, Iran, Somalia and Bhutan are among the others. There is probably no other nation that has admitted so few U.S. citizens. The entourage of nearly 300 people with the New York Philharmonic was by far the largest number of American visitors in more than half a century.
